Pause for Thought

I have a neighbour who’s always building something out back. Like everybody else he’s also thrilled by any break in the Scottish weather. Which means of course that whenever the sun peeks out from behind a rain cloud and we all step outside to marvel at the sight of a blue sky in Scotland, the sound of an electric grinder begins or the smell of creosote starts to waft across the garden. He hammers and saws, he fits and bends, he nails and grinds. And never seems to get called in for tea – I don’t know when the man eats - there’s no break in the din – no respite.

He’s such a ‘doer’ this neighbour of mind. The man is an utter bastion of industry. Mostly on nice days, mind.

No, neighbours are no fun sometimes. People will occasionally come to blows over Leylandia hedges which have started to loom large and lopped-off branches of cherry trees where the trunk of the tree is tantalizingly close to the property line.

Other people are our greatest hope and the cause of our undoing. We are tempted to avoid them – close contact anyway. It’s always safer to be alone, to live alone – to this end people have forsworn marriage and avoided children. To this end folks will maintain a lifelong arms-length relationship with churches and organizations – always casting their vote but never serving on the executive.

At the graveside of one very ancient lady a number of years back, surrounded by her children and foster children, by students she had mentored – by people with whom she had been on speaking terms and folks with whom she had struggled, one of her equally ancient friends leaned over to me after the committal and said: “She was all used up you know”. All used up.

It’s what you do with fuel – and though you might worry about not having enough, it’s what fuel is for - and money, and effort, compromise, forgiveness, conversation.

Sorry that you feel your capacity is being stretched. Your irritation is noted – but community is precisely what these things are for. What on earth did you think you were saving them for?

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Pause for Thought begins at 1:09.49 on the audio bar